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Pro-Palestinian activism. Violent, intolerant, dangerous and racist

If anyone knows the true face of Pro-Palestinian activism in the UK, then I do. My assessment is not built on assumptions, bias, or just a dislike of their politics. I simply spent a long time dressed as one of them. Going to their events, seeing how they act, and listening carefully to what they were saying. It didn’t take long before I realised that whatever the outward humanitarian mask, many of these people were not what they seemed. A deep and persistent undercurrent of hating Jews, or antisemitism, infested these groups every time they gathered. The meetings I attended were breeding grounds for intolerance, thuggery and racism.

So I did some detailed research on two of the main groups of pro-Palestinian activism in the UK. The first on the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), and later (on behalf of Jewish Human Rights Watch), on the PSC ‘sister ship’ in Scotland, the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). The results were clear and brutal. Almost half of Pro-Palestinian activists found on the streets, shared and promoted material from white-supremacy websites.

Same thugs, different heads

After publication, both groups chose to belittle or ignore the reports. They had little choice, as whilst the findings were indefensible, if either of these movements were to actually try to cleanse such racism from their midst, they’d cease to actively function. So the groups called me names and some of the activists made threatening remarks.

Still, there are important differences between these two movements both in size and structure, and in turn, this effected the way the reports were perceived. The PSC is much larger and it has a better, far more political, structure. There are Patrons, and a board that itself, doesn’t really take to the streets. In turn, this opened up space for denial. They claimed these people on the streets were not ‘PSC’. It doesn’t matter that they are manning the stalls, running the events, heading the branches. The PSC had enough of a political head to create deniability (even if one of the people that ran their stall at the 2016 Labour Party Conference had frequently shared such racist material).

The SPSC had no such luxury. Mick Napier sits at the top of the SPSC and he is the most active of them all. The SPSC group is smaller than the PSC, and there wasn’t enough space between the top and the activists to create such deniability. They were too exposed. Napier, and thus the SPSC, had publicly identified itself with the racist thugs in the report, far too often for anyone to claim innocence when the report was published.

All this though is just cosmetic. In reality the PSC are just as dirty as the SPSC. Because the activists are all the same. The actions are all the same, The racism is all the same. North and South of the border. From the perspective of the street, and the ideology of the activists on the street, there is no separating them. In many ways this means the PSC in England & Wales is worse, because there are far more of them, and they operate under a greater veneer of respectability. In turn, this makes them more effective. When racists are more effective, we enter into ‘dangerous’ territory.

Pro-Palestinian Racists in the North

In Scotland yesterday (11 September 2017), Ally Coutts was found guilty of ‘acting in a racially aggravated manner with intent to cause distress and alarm’. A charge based on ‘racism’. Coutts was an SPSC activist, who along with other SPSC activists, have been trying to hound a Jewish owned business in Aberdeen. The SPSC had already chased Nisan Ayallon, the owner of this business, out of Glasgow. This is still a story only because of Nisan’s persistence, other businesses simply left, with the SPSC crowing ‘victory’ every time.

So as Scotland has Jewish businesses chased from its streets in 2017, the question was only about ‘motive’. Are these BDS thugs going after the goods, or is it more personal. Nisan Ayallon provided a perfect case study for analysis because he also holds Israeli citizenship.

Having spoken to someone who was at the court yesterday, there was little doubt. Security at the mall had no doubt. The police had no doubt and as it turned out, the Sheriff had no doubt. Nisan was targeted specifically. The action – racist. There were even Israeli goods in the same mall, that were left untouched. It was a personal attack. Nisan’s stall was attacked, Nisan’s staff were harassed and Nissan’s livelihood has been affected, because of racist SPSC thugs.

Like most thugs who use our liberties to attack the freedoms of others, Napier has laughed at legal attempts to curtail his actions. Napier often uses the image of a sports scoreboard depicting how often his crew have escaped such charges. The verdict is in. His team now needs to change their name to ‘racists’.

Pro Palestinian Thugs in the South

On the subject of thugs, we can now focus on events in Birmingham on Saturday 9th September. We leave the territory of the SPSC, and enter the PSC’s domain. West Midlands Palestine Solidarity Campaign (WMPSC) were hosting an event, with Haneen Zoabi speaking. Zoabi is an elected Arab representative in the Israeli Parliament. I have seen Zoabi speak before. As is so tragically common with Pro-Palestinian activism, an agency problem exists, and Zoabi, rather than seek to better the life of her constituents, spreads lies and hate about Jews wherever she goes. Because of this the PSC adore her.

How seriously she is taken is evidence of how little the pro-Palestinian world is connected with reality. Zoabi is an elected member of a parliament that she freely criticises. Zoabi’s role and her actions are evidence of Israel’s freedoms, not the opposite. When Zoabi speaks of oppression, everyone in the audience should laugh.

One or two in the audience on Saturday, including Mandy Blumenthal, began to interrupt, having had enough of Zoabi’s persistent incitement. Immediately, one of the PSC’s central thugs, Sarah Wilkinson, gets up and stands directly in front of those becoming vocal. Wilkinson had been arrested just days before in London, in another anti-Israel protest.

The video below leaves no question as to the intolerance and violence inherent in these groups. In a mirror of actual Palestinian activity, within hours of the violence, the WMPSC had uploaded edited footage and suggested it was the ‘Zionists’ who unprovoked, had attacked the crowd. Only later, after I managed to obtain and upload missing parts of the footage, did they swiftly take their posts and their false accusations down.

Whatever you think of the interrupting, it is a strategy taken from the Pro-Palestinian activists own handbook. The Pro-Palestinian activists claim this is a fair action to take and use it frequently (and far worse). This makes their violent response even more inexcusable.

Wilkinson clearly grabs Mandy Blumenthal’s phone and runs, Blumenthal runs to retrieve it, and is eventually surrounded and attacked. This is the true face of left fascists. Those who are able to meet criticism and verbal opposition only with violence. That these groups are built on an ideology that dehumanises over 90% of world Jewry, makes them a direct threat to Jewish communities worldwide. Remember, between 40-50% of these activists share material from neo-Nazi sites. It doesn’t matter what the other half of them think, in history, it never has.

Pro-Palestinian is anti-Israel, anti-Jewish

I titled this blog with the use of the term ‘Pro-Palestinian’. I did so deliberately to highlight the stupidity of people using it. There is nothing ‘pro-Palestinian’ about any of this. These are racist, violent thugs, who target Jews because of their identity, and are willing to hound them out of business and violently attack them. Anti-Israel, or anti-Jewish (or both) are the best names for this activism. We have to stand up to them, and to anybody who gives them cover. Our opposition needs to be relentless.

These racist thugs, turn to the tiny minority of Jews (the 5%) to artificially give them cover. Just this week, a Scottish Blog called Bella Caledonia, incredibly published a piece that tried to excuse people posting material from white supremacy websites. The piece was written by one of the 5%. It actually blamed the victims of racism for the racism. A horrific, disgraceful piece, that highlights how twisted these people are willing to become to protect their fetish. Bella Caledonia actually gave cover to Nazis. Imagine what you could do to any minority, if it was legitimate to find their 5% to use as a cover to attack them.

What is clear, is that these groups are dangerous. For decades they have collected money across the UK. They do so by pushing tragic pictures of the ugly face of conflict. But they are thugs, they are intolerant, they are racist and they are dangerous. Their motivation, just as with the attacks on Nisan, is all about the Jews.

One other thing to remember too. For all the money they have collected, for all the claims that they are doing it for the betterment of Palestinians. The number of Jewish businesses they have successfully forced to close in the UK, is larger than the number of Palestinian refugees they have helped out of refugee status. More Jewish businesses closed, than schools or hospitals built. It isn’t about making things better for the Palestinians at all, it is about making things worse for the Jews. Think about that.

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The problem has been allowed to fester for years. Failure to deal with it at source through the courts with stiff sentences has empowered these fascists to up the antes . The assault on the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra at the Summer Proms 2011 should have been a warning to us all . From protest and disruption the psc have progressed to all out assault and general thuggery . Today we learn of Corbyn’s deputy calling for insurrrection and civil disobedience in order to seize power. It should come as no surprise . It’s a part of Marxist ideology where democratic rule through the ballot box is an anathema – unless the outcome suits their purpose. BDS which is part of this repugnant ideology and movement has assumed all the trappings of fascism including a willingness to resort to violence in order to achieve their goals.

Stephen, is this all you have in your locker? Almost every single time I see you post, rather than a discussion or argument over the core topics, you reduce it to base personal attacks against individual posters. Harvey, Jonathan and so on. I let everyone post here because free speech is important to me and we learn from hearing as many opinions as possible, but can you stick to opinions related to the topics, rather than finding any excuse to making a personal attack against others contributing to the discussion? It is tiresome and it unnecessarily lowers the tone.

David, Harvey is bemoaning the failure to deal with ” it” through the courts. Since Harvey has some experience in these matters I merely was wondering if he might be gracious enough to share that experience with us.

Well may I be allowed to make a comment genuinely in praise of Jonathan.?Absolutely no sarcasm. Seriously. Albeit somewhat off topic, but not entirely.

Jonathan may be a buffoon and lots of other things but he is not unintelligent. In fact he has a very keen intelligence. If only he would employ it in furtherance of the well being of mankind.There has been much talk of the antisemitism survey by Jewish Policy Research. Amidst it I have only noticed two people that grasped the implications.

Guess who ?

Ok I will put you out of your misery.

JONATHAN and MEEEEEEE

First we have there is no more antisemiism on the left than in the general population. That means given that the Labour Party spans virtually the whole of the left and some way into the right, there is not a particular AS problem in the LP.

But it gets better, or worse from Jonathan’s point of view. If you concur with, or make, anti virulent anti Israel statements you are STATISTICALLY more likely to be antisemitic than you would be if you were Joe general population. That is you are STATISTICALLY more likely to make or concur with, or make anti semitic statements. Statistically more like does not mean that you are.

The anti Israel statements/attitudes are not antisemitic and if you want to fairly make this very serious charge against someone making them you are going to have to find some corroborating evidence. You can’t rely on the anti Israel statements because that hopelessly fails the circularity test. You have to find some antisemitic statements that are independent of the anti Israel ones.

In other words the author/s of the report agree with me. There is NOTHING you can say about The State of Israel that is antisemitic. Jonathan grasped this in a nano second.

In other words the IHRA definition is dead in the water. This is great protection for the victims of the coming Newmark / JLM witch hunt and others..

I tip my hat to you Jonathan. Maybe we should meet for a mutual congratulatory pint. I could stroke his ego and he could stroke mine.

Someone has your number well and truly.
Stephen Bellamy on August 25, 2017 at 7:11 am
Hirsh is a rabid anti socialist with fascist tendencies. He set out to bust his own Trade Union in the service of The State of Israel,and pocketed a £ 50K bung to help facilitate this.

Reply
Jim Denham on August 25, 2017 at 3:12 pm
Hirsh is a leftist of sorts: to describe him as having “fascist tendencies” is a filthy slur. Actually, its rabid anti-Semites like you, Bellamy, who are close to fascism.

Well done to Mandy Blumenthal, who went after the woman who stole her phone. A similar thing happened outside the Palestine expo a few weeks back (with the addition of criminal damage and two assaults), also recorded on video, and the 3 police officers present all refused to record the incident let alone accept that any crime had taken place and escorted the attacker to safety and freedom after I had detained him.
We must all fight in our own way, but it seems increasingly clear that this means being physically present to challange the lies as they are spewed and increasingly, being prepared to defend ourselves.

Well a book if you prefer. You tell us that these activists are not genuinely pro Palestinian. I merely am asking what a genuinely pro Palestinain activist would look like. What would be his tactics and strategies ? What would he spend his time doing ? How would I recognise him ?

Just to let you know I am a Christian and am 100% behind Israel against these neo Nazi thugs. If I’m allowed, I will stand with the Jews. I am already a member of Israel Forever! And the Norh West friends of Israel. I buy Israeli products as often as possible and tell the staff in the shop exactly why. The BDS and their Fascist allies are only a very small noisy group and I know that long after they realise they can no longer bully the Jews they will move onto the next minority and the Jews and Israel wlll carry on long after they have died off.
Thank you.